


The Wandering Boy

by hakusbitch



Series: The Boy [2]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Adults, Bittersweet Ending, Death, Family, Family Loss, Family Reunions, Gen, Murder, Random & Short, Reunions, Serial Killer, Short, Short One Shot, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29035899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hakusbitch/pseuds/hakusbitch
Summary: A boy's life was forcibly ended too soon in a gruesome way when he was trying to find respite. He loses his way along the journey but ends up where he should have been all along. It just took many years of watching over the brunette lady to finally find peace.
Series: The Boy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2130174





	The Wandering Boy

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to Too Bad, So Sad. Please enjoy and point out any mistakes!

They were all laughing and having a good time without him like he wasn’t missed or noticed. It had taken him many years to reach this house, traveling aimlessly to an idea of a place. What went unnoticed were the strained smiles and forced laughter that rung through the room. The occupants all gathered in the warm room, only to feel a coldness spread over all of them, forced into an eternal suffocating shroud. 

In the corner was a shrine to a boy. He had died four years earlier in a gruesome way, the gathering being an anniversary. His body had only been named a year ago when the killer was caught. Soon after his arrest, he said he wanted to tell his story and in doing so, found pleasure in the reactions he got and the euphoria that washed over him. The man had smiled with pure glee in his eyes as he recalled his adventures with the misplaced boys. Of how he took advantage of them to his body’s content, of how he left them discarded like the trash they were.  
Twenty- nine names were rattled off over the course of ten months, the man taking pleasure in making families and the police wait to hear their beloved’s names. At the exact four-month date since his capture, he told the story of a young teenager who he found residing at a bus stop, alone and hungry. How he grasped the pitiful excuse of a blue blanket of his to his shivering body, with eyes unfocused and bleary as the snow fell.  
It was one of his easiest takes, he bragged. The boy practically jumped into his arms with the promise of food and warmth in exchange for his body. He laughed at how the teenager was willing to let the man do whatever to him so easily. All it had taken was the promise of a better life after one night with him for that said life to end abruptly. 

The female wept and cursed loudly when the policemen came to her house a year ago, telling her that they had found the body of her brother years ago in a muddy forest, left to rot and be picked apart. She listened as quietly as she could when they retold the story they knew belonged to the eleventh young body. She couldn’t find her voice to oppose what they told her, despair running through her veins. She tried to cling to the hope that he was still out there for the past decade, that after all those years of being split up, they’d meet again in a warm embrace. That was laughable to her now. The false hope she carried for all those years was just vehement denial, one that she could not accept about her younger brother. 

All he was now were fading memories and a small urn that resided next to the most recent picture she had of him. His nine-year-old face radiated innocent hope misled by the world. They were cruelly separated years ago due to their parents and sent to different states and families. The sister had been lucky. When she heard of what happened to her brother before he ran away from his foster family, made her almost as sick. His body was used as they pleased, and it seemed to continue all the way to his demise. 

Standing in the middle of the room, his body still felt cold. He couldn’t feel the warmth he expected to feel when he finally saw the brunette lady again. He couldn’t remember who she was to him after years of wondering, looking for the right place, but he knew deep down she was important. He walked up to her, shouting and pleading to be heard, only to be ignored as if he did not exist.

He felt so tired, his bones had ached for years as if he’d aged decades in that one night. He reached forward to his only hope, only to have her fall right through his grasp as life had done many years ago. He felt empty. Resigning to his frigid fate, he remained in the full house. It felt so empty even as he was surrounded by people.  
He wandered over to the small picture on the table, placed next to candles and a metal urn. The boy smiled at the camera with a gaze so strong and bright. The sun seemed to hit strands of his hair at angles, making him glow ethereally. He cuddled around a fluffy blue flannel blanket with it thrown around his narrow shoulders. The teenager did not recognize the little boy in the image, but it made him uneasy. Uneasy as if he were missing something obvious. He moved around the shrine and walked into the desolate bathroom, avoiding the image. 

He thought about leaving the house, leaving the people who refused to acknowledge him behind in the dust. He felt as though something was missing from him, something crucial to his being. One he had yet to recognize or find as if the memory of it had been burned away years ago. Instead, he remained in the suffocating household with the hopeless feeling that someone one day would see him again. 

He resided in the corner of the living room, watching people come and go. The brunette lady was the only one who remained in the end. She remained until she grew grey and bitter, sick of what the world had become and mostly sick of herself. The lady found no solace alone nor in the company of others. Her personality faded away until all that was left of her was a shell of a human being that had been racked with pain and guilt. 

The teenager remained by her side until she faded away altogether. He remained until he felt he could no longer keep his eyes open, tired of fighting whatever was in store for his future. He dragged himself over to the velvet red and off-white couch and took his final seat. As he stretched out his limbs, a comfortable feeling enveloped his body slowly, easing away the year’s old aches. 

By the time she had realized what had happened to her, a young boy she never forgot resided on the worn couch, appearing to be sleeping gently. She felt a flash of emotions she hadn’t felt in decades, a quick zing of warmth spreading through her soul. With a long-forgotten vigor, she rushed towards the boy and gently slid down to her knees. Her hands shook in their place against her thighs, not quite believing she was truly seeing her little brother whom she lost ages ago. Reaching her hands out, she felt the soft ruddy cheeks of the boy who had aged without her, but not for nearly long enough. Too short had his life been and hers had been too long in return. 

Smoothing out the wrinkles on the male’s forehead became the next target of her wandering hands. She gazed at his face with critical eyes, taking in all the details she had not been privy to. Along his eyes were marks of age that shouldn’t be there, that couldn’t be there. A slim scar ran down his brow to his prominent cheekbone, ragged and pink. The soft, blonde eyelashes rested against his cheeks, illuminated by the dark marks underneath his eyes. His hair was shaggy and in dire need of a cut but remained soft to the touch. 

His eyes blinked beneath his eyelids rapidly and a frown deepened on his face, marking his face with intense suffering. Rising off her knees, the girl moved to sit beside the boy. She shook him roughly to get him to wake up, succeeding after a few tries. 

He opened his eyes as if he had been in a deep sleep that had lasted eons, finally coming out of a never-ending nightmare to see warm hazel eyes staring at him with emotions that had not been directed at him for quite some time. His body flooded with relief before he realized who she was or where he was.  
With a voice raspy from lack of use, he called out “I- Sister…”, but was promptly shushed. She wrapped her solid arms around him and what the boy had yearned for so long had finally happened. He felt acknowledged by her as if he finally truly existed. Her right hand reached up into his hair, smoothing out fussed up strands, and gently forced him to lay it down on her shoulder. 

“Shush, brother. We can finally rest together again, peacefully this time… close your eyes again. It’s finally the right time for us.” He did as she said, not being able to resist the temptation of hope again, this time rightfully placed. She nestled his head into the crook of her neck, shifting until they were tightly embraced together with the intent to never let go. 

As both sets of hazel eyes closed for the final time, the suffocating shroud that had been forced down onto the family lifted, leaving them with a feeling they had not felt or realized they could ever feel again. Peace. A calming, slow rush of peace ran through the deepest pits of their souls at the reunion.

They both drifted away in the warm embrace, remaining together until they finally drifted away for eternity.


End file.
